


spark from a flame: courtyard rights and other tales

by acezukos (purplefennels7)



Series: burn bright, burn fast [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: First Dates, First Kiss, M/M, Pre-Canon, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, and they were sparring partners, firebending and emotions, soft!jeong jeong, the omc is just piandao's friend don't worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26090770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefennels7/pseuds/acezukos
Summary: Everyone knows about Admiral Jeong Jeong, youngest to make the rank in decades and a firebending prodigy besides. When his fleet docks at Piandao's army base and Piandao ends up challenging him to aduelspar over his preferred courtyard space, he starts realizing that this may not have been the wisest decision, becauseoh,he's pretty and talented and really cute when he's flustered, and very quickly becoming a friend. And maybe more than a friend, if Piandao has anything to say about it.
Relationships: Jeong Jeong/Piandao (Avatar)
Series: burn bright, burn fast [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924690
Comments: 51
Kudos: 167





	spark from a flame: courtyard rights and other tales

**Author's Note:**

> HI IT'S HERE THE SOFT!PIANJEONG // SHY!JEONG JEONG FIC I'VE PROMISED (working title "soft pianjeong dot gif"). this was supposed to be a first kiss fic and then i spent 15k having them become friends bc the strangers to friends dynamic is important to me. anyway your honour that's my emotional support background character ship and i love them with my whole gd heart. i dearly hope you enjoy <3
> 
> also i am ignoring canon homophobia and giving jj brown eyes because my city now.

Piandao is just taking the second sip of his five-flavoured soup when the voice tubes in the mess hall whine to life, and a bored-sounding voice announces that all personnel must report to the courtyard at once, General’s orders. 

“What do you think he wants?” he asks, putting the bowl down and giving it a regretful glance as he pushes away from the table and offers his friend Lee a hand to pull him to his feet.

“No idea,” Lee replies, slightly garbled by the large mochi that he’s just stuffed into his mouth. “Think we’re getting reassigned? Somewhere closer to the front, I hope. It’s boring here.” 

“Boring is good in war,” Piandao chides, reaching over to liberate another mochi from Lee’s hand and taking a smaller bite. “Would you rather be squashed by some earthbender because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time? I think not.”

“Better than sitting around doing nothing and scrubbing the floors when the General wants us to suffer.” Piandao shakes his head, eating the rest of the mochi so he doesn’t need to answer. Lee is possibly his best friend - they’d met at the same training camp when they were nineteen and immediately bonded over a mutual appreciation of swordsmanship, and were assigned to the same posting afterwards - but sometimes he wonders if he really does have a death wish, with how often he wishes he were on the front lines. Piandao is only here because he has to be; six years of mandatory service and then he’s free to go, and he isn’t going to delude himself into thinking that he’s anything more than an expendable body.

When they reach the big central courtyard Lee darts off to find the rest of his unit, waving over his shoulder as he goes. Piandao waves back and then heads for his own captain, visible where he stands nearly a head above most of the soldiers now crowding into the space. As the flow of people into the square slows to a trickle, they start arranging themselves into the approximation of straight lines facing the curtained balcony. A horn fanfare precedes the arrival of the General, sweeping onto the balcony in full regalia, and the entire courtyard snaps to uniform attention.

“At ease,” the General declares, staring down at them with an imperious look on his face. “Word has just come from Caldera,” he continues once the rustling of people settling into parade rest has ceased. “We will be receiving Admiral Jeong Jeong and his fleet for the rest of the summer months in preparation for a further expansion to the east when autumn comes.” 

With the General in the room there are no whispers, but a frisson runs through the crowd nevertheless. Everyone knows about Admiral Jeong Jeong, youngest to make the rank in decades and a firebending prodigy besides. The number of accolades painted on the sides of his strike team’s ships are well on their way to becoming the stuff of legend, and the rumour goes that he’d been granted a private audience with the Fire Lord after his latest victory on the westernmost shores of the Earth Kingdom.

“You are the best of our army, and I expect you to act like it. Those Navy brats won’t know what’s hit them.” He pauses to sweep his gaze over the courtyard, eyes narrowed. “This base will be scrubbed top to bottom before the fleet arrives. Duty rotations and new watch schedules will be set in the morning. Dismissed.”

The curtain swishes shut after the General’s retreating back, and the silence holds for a single inhale before the neatly arrayed ranks scatter into little knots of whispers. As Piandao weaves his way through the groups of soldiers, searching for wherever Lee’s unit has disappeared off to, he catches pieces of hushed, and not so hushed, speculation, and fights the urge to roll his eyes. It’s the same thing as it always is, whenever someone deviates from the slow trudge up the ladder of command track. _Too young_ , _too reckless_ \- as if any of them aren’t _._

For his own part, Piandao has never put much stock in the idea of a prodigy, but neither does he put much in rumours. The Admiral, no matter how much talent he may or may not have, is only a man, just like all the rest of them, and there is no better medium than war to show how men can be flawed. 

He finally spots Lee leaning against the wall next to a hanging tapestry, and slips around a statue to fetch up beside him and poke him in the shoulder to make him jump.

“Piandao! Can you believe - the Admiral, coming here?” Piandao lifts his eyes to the ceiling and sighs.

“Not you, too.” Lee looks at him oddly, eyes widening when he realizes that he’s being serious.

“What do you mean, _me too?_ It’s _Admiral Jeong Jeong,_ you know, the prodigy - did you hear someone said he can bend lightning? The Fire Lord’s the only other firebender who can do that, and he’s the _Fire Lord.”_

“Hm,” Piandao says noncommittally, fiddling with the edge of his belt. “Well, if you just listen to what people say, I’m pretty sure the General’s an undercover waterbender this week.”

“That’s not the point,” Lee protests, then elbows Piandao gently in the ribs. “I _also_ heard that he’s hot, but, you know, don’t listen to what people say.”

“Hang on, how old is he again?” Piandao asks without thinking, only processing his own words when Lee lets out a gleeful cackle. “Shut up.”

“I shall not. He’s 25, by the way.” Piandao double-takes so hard he nearly hits his head against the wall. 

_“Twenty-five?_ Shit, he’s younger than us, _what?_ Who put a 25-year-old in charge of a fleet?” 

“What do you think ‘prodigy’ means?”

“I mean - what, no, I know what prodigy means, I just thought he’d be, like, 28 or 29, maybe even our age, not _five years out of the academy.”_

“Isn’t it impressive?” Lee is practically bouncing on his toes, and Piandao reluctantly lets himself grin, because yeah, that’s something else. Even if he still sort of doubts that someone their age should be leading an entire fleet; he’s pretty sure that if someone suddenly promoted him to general the world would quite literally burn.

“Sounds like someone’s got a crush, hm?” he teases. Lee freezes, then waves his hands, looking slightly desperate.

“Do not!” Piandao smirks, throwing one arm across Lee’s shoulders and starting to walk them back out of the courtyard - he wants to get back to the mess hall, he isn’t about to go the rest of the day on two bites of soup and a mochi.

“Whatever you say, buddy, whatever you say.”

* * *

Luckily, or unluckily, Piandao draws watchtower duty for the day the fleet is supposed to arrive. This puts him up on the high wall before dawn, sword slung over his back and his helmet abandoned on the nearby desk. The moon hovers just above the horizon, and a few birds whirl overhead as he leans his elbows against the windowsill of the guardhouse and sips from a cup of tea to try and wake up properly. On a normal day he would just take his sword out to the back courtyard to run through a couple basic forms and get his blood flowing, but the little building he’s in isn’t quite big enough for him to do his katas without causing irreparable damage. So, tea it is.

The sky gets progressively lighter over his next three cups of oolong, and he’s no firebender but the sight of the sun rising over the mountains and painting the sky in increments of gold always makes him yearn for a brush in his hand, even though he knows he isn’t nearly good enough to capture it properly. He passes the next hour or so staring out over the arc of the natural harbour, contemplating which paints he might use to get the colours right. Painting, he’s discovered, is much more like fighting than he’d ever imagined. Brute force, or raw talent, can only take someone that far. The rest comes from _practice,_ and a good amount of thought. It isn’t just about hitting people with sharp objects or fire; it’s about looking for loopholes, for weaknesses, and _strategizing._ He’d never say it aloud but he wonders sometimes whether many of his fellow soldiers, whether benders or not, realize that.

The sun has crept about halfway up the sky, shining through the guardhouse window and warming the square of floor it falls on, when the telltale black smoke of Fire Nation navy ships wafts up into the clear blue sky. Piandao waits for the first prows to appear, dark tally marks perpendicular to the horizon, and then darts out onto the wall to sound the alert. As the captains assemble their units in formation behind the big gates, seven ships come into view over the curve of the horizon, assembled in a rough triangle with three on each side of the center ship, whose prow glitters with the gold filigree of a flagship. 

It takes long minutes for them to make the approach to the harbour, moving into a single-file line and puffing smoke as they slow to a crawl. As the bow of the first ship passes the two arms of the harbour entrance, Piandao yanks at the lever to open the gates and holds onto the desk as the mechanisms grind into motion below him, rattling the entire guardhouse like a toy shaken in a child’s hand. Far below, the rectangle of soldiers splits into two columns as the General and his retinue stride out of the base doors and down the newly formed aisle, coming to a stop in the middle of the opening between the gates and unfurling a pair of tall banners emblazoned with the Fire Nation sigil. A matching banner drops down from the smokestack of the flagship, edged with flag-officer gold leaf, and from his vantage point Piandao can make out a single figure standing at the bow, hands clasped behind their back and chin raised high. 

The dockhands scurry out as the ship glides to a stop next to the main dock, tossing ropes up to the men on deck and tying them to the capstans. Further down the shore, the process repeats with each of the remaining ships. 

The clang of the gangplank hitting the dock is audible all the way up the walls, and the figure at the bow turns and makes their way across the fo’c’sle with a retinue falling into line behind them. The Admiral, Piandao surmises. The two commanders meet halfway between the gates and the dock, pausing together to exchange greetings, and then proceed between the gates to stand before the gathered men. A ripple passes through the crowd as they drop into bows, and the Admiral responds in kind, rising to say a few muffled words before continuing with the General through the formation and on into the compound proper. 

Piandao waits until the doors have clanged shut to push the lever to close the gates, and then settles back into his previous position leaning against the window. He still has a few hours left before he’s relieved, and he expects that the rest of the day will be taken up by the requisite ceremonials that arise whenever two equally-ranked commanders have to share a space. It comes as a pleasant surprise, then, when his replacement informs him that he’s free to return to the barracks until further notice.

He drops by the mess hall to eat lunch on the way back, and is sitting cross-legged on his bedroll, sharpening the edge of his sword with a small whetstone when Lee comes barrelling through the door. He barely misses crashing into the wall, then collapses on his own bedroll and looks over at Piandao with an enormous grin on his face.

“Hey. Hey, guess what?” he says, prodding Piandao in the ankle with the tip of a finger. “Never mind, I’ll just tell you. I’ve just been with my unit, the captain called us down and didn’t tell us what was going on but the Admiral was there and, and Piandao he _knew my name.”_ Piandao squints at him, setting his sword and whetstone off to the side.

“There’s a thousand people on this base, Lee, there’s no way.”

“Would I lie to you about this?”

“I mean…” Lee scoffs and flops onto his back, staring up at the ceiling and looking dopey.

“I wouldn’t, that’s the correct answer. And it wasn’t just me. He went down the line and named all of us, and he asked how my father’s shop was doing, like, it wasn’t just a lucky guess.” And it isn’t like Piandao thinks that Lee’s lying to him, but also, seriously. There’s no _way._ Piandao doesn’t even think he knows the names of most of the soldiers outside his immediate circle, and he’s served here for nearly four years. 

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he says, picking his sword up again and returning to his task. 

“I think he’s going through all the units, ‘cause I saw Captain Ming and hers when we were leaving. So you’ll see, probably today too.” They sit in silence for a bit, the only noise the rasp of metal against stone, until Piandao sighs and looks back at Lee where he’s still basically vibrating.

“So, you heard he was hot,” he says, prodding him with the pommel of his sword. “Got any new thoughts on that now that you’ve seen him in person?” Lee bolts up straight, looking a little like he might light on fire, bending be damned.

“Agni save me,” he mutters, turning to look Piandao directly in the eyes and holding up one finger. “I will tell you one thing. _Cheekbones.”_ Piandao grins.

“Maybe you’ve got a chance, now that he knows your name and everything.” Lee buries his face in his hands, and Piandao reaches out to mess up his topknot while he can’t bat him away.

“Shut up, I never should’ve said anything. Anyway, I think I’d be disowned if I ever even looked at a Navy man. Or woman, and I don’t even like women.”

“Career military is so _weird.”_

“Tell me about it.” Lee lays back down and shuts his eyes, rolling so his back is to Piandao. “Wake me up for dinner, if you don’t get called to meet the Admiral before then. Oh, and we don’t have any of those stupid ceremonials either. Don’t tell anyone I told you, though, I sort of think the Admiral didn’t talk to the General about it because he looked _real_ surprised.”

“Huh,” Piandao says. That’s _unconventional,_ to say the least. Normally flag officers love that sort of thing, the posturing and preening in front of an audience literally obliged to clap. “I’ll come get you around eighteen-hundred, is that fine?”

“Yeah.” Lee’s breathing goes deep and even in a matter of minutes, and Piandao gets carefully to his feet and returns his whetstone to his bag, then exchanges his uniform for a loose-fit tunic and pants. He still wants to get in some practice while he has the time, even though lying down for a while does sound like an alright proposition.

It takes until after dinner, where the conversation is dominated by increasingly outlandish rumours - he’s willing to accept the names thing, but he highly doubts that the Admiral had disguised himself as a tea boy and infiltrated Ba Sing Se - for Piandao’s unit to be summoned. They assemble in the hallway outside one of the smaller meeting rooms, dress uniforms polished to a shine, and their captain gives them a critical once-over, pointing out stray hairs and smudges and glaring in a way that threatens a demerit in the offenders’ near futures. He then moves over to the door and raps twice on it, and waves them through when a muffled voice declares _Enter._

The room is barely big enough to fit all twenty of them in a typical two-row formation, which means that Piandao spends the first minute navigating parade rest in shoulder pauldrons while squeezed between the people to his left and right. As he attempts to position himself without bumping into anyone else, he sees a pair of men standing in one of the corners, one tall and one short, their faces cast in shadow. They’re both wearing the two-tiered pauldrons of ranking officers, and idly he wonders which one is the Admiral. The tall one, probably; the other man looks like he barely comes up to Piandao’s shoulder. Some sort of aide, most likely.

He’s proved suddenly and immediately incorrect as the captain clicks the door shut and falls in at the end of the line, and the shorter man is the first to turn and walk into the light, the other flanking him at his shoulder. When Piandao catches a first glimpse of his face, the first thing he notices is that he _does_ have cheekbones that could cut steel, followed by the pair of scars down the right side of his face and _is that an eyebrow slit?_

_Shit,_ he thinks, and has to clamp his mouth shut to avoid it falling open. Apparently Lee’s finally achieved some decent taste in men. 

He’s introducing himself now, as Admiral Jeong Jeong of the Southern Fleet, special unit strike team five, and he even has a nice voice, all deep and soft with a slight hint of steel at the edges, and Piandao wants to sink into it like a warm blanket. 

He thinks vaguely that these are not the kinds of thoughts one should be having about their temporary co-commanding officer, and then just as quickly decides that he doesn’t particularly care. It isn’t like he’s going to do anything about it, anyway, and if the Admiral doesn’t want looks then he shouldn’t look like _that._

The Admiral finishes his little speech, mostly about establishing rapport between their two forces while they’re sharing the base, and then steps forward out of the circle of light cast by the lanterns at the front of the room. His hands flash outwards, index and middle fingers tight together, and four precise jets of fire whizz over the heads of the unit and ignite the unlit lanterns behind them. It’s clearly staged, but Piandao still makes an appreciative noise along with the rest of the people around him, because that’s some pretty impressive bending. 

The Admiral gives them a nod of acknowledgement, and continues on to stand in front of the man to the very left of the front row, just outside Piandao’s peripheral vision where he still has his eyes fixed straight forwards. 

He can hear the muted surprise in the others’ voices as they respond to whatever the Admiral says to them, and as he gets closer he starts being able to make out words. _Lin, yes? How is your father’s flower shop? Jiang, I hear your sister has just graduated from her academy? Chen, am I right? I wish your brother the best of luck as palace advisor._ Spirits, Piandao hadn’t even known that Chen’s brother had passed the entrance exams, and she’d been bragging about being related to ‘the Fire Lord’s future right hand’ for months. 

The Admiral finally stops in front of Piandao, giving him a once-over and then meeting his eyes with an unwavering, severe gaze. He’s obviously young, compared to his aide or even some of the men in the room, but he holds his shoulders with the weight of years of command on them. His hair is pulled neatly back and fastened with a hairpiece of the Fire Nation symbol, but Piandao’s eye is caught by the hints of grey along his temples that would be fit for a man twice his age but that he somehow manages to pull off anyway. 

This close, it’s clear that he really is a full head shorter, but his presence all but negates the height difference. His poetic side would call it larger-than-life, but he doesn’t use words like that lightly.

“Piandao,” he says, and his name rolls off his tongue like it was made for him to say it.

“Sir,” Piandao replies, putting all his willpower into keeping his voice emotionless when all he wants is to hear his name in that voice over and over again.

“Your sister is joining the royal court this season, is she not? Tell her that if she would like, I can put in a good word for her.” He blinks, and then blinks again. Nepotism in court appointments is barely even worthy of mention at this point, but it’s usually just that - nepotism. The Admiral doesn’t know anything about Piandao, not really, but is still offering up his reputation as an unasked favour. 

“It would be a great honour,” he says, mostly because Ren would kill him if she knew he’d had this opportunity and said no. 

“Consider it done.” The Admiral gives him a nod, and a small piece of hair escapes his topknot and falls over his forehead, parallel to the scar that splits his eyebrow. Piandao feels like he’s been punched in the stomach, and he barely stops himself from turning his head to look after him as he moves on to the woman next to him. He’s never hated parade rest more.

“Fine, I guess you were right,” he tells Lee, who accosts him the moment he gets back to the barracks asking if he believes him now. “He knew everyone.” _And my name sounds good when he says it,_ he tacks on in his head.

“That’ll teach you to doubt me,” Lee retorts, punching him in the arm. Piandao scoffs and scrubs a hand through his friend’s hair, messing it up and making him yelp. 

“Okay, you manage to have taste one time,” he teases, holding up one finger in emphasis. “Sorry if that doesn’t make up for all the other times you were wrong.” Lee gives him a wolfish grin.

“So you agree with that, too.” Confused, Piandao tries to think back to what he’d said, and, oh, spirits.

“Shut up.”

“Hey, you’re not wrong,” Lee says. Piandao decides not to dignify that with a response.

* * *

Piandao lets himself sleep a bit later than usual the next morning, in recompense for having to get up early for guard duty. He usually gets up around dawn, though, so even with that the sun is only barely peeking over the mountains when he rolls out of bed, splashing some water on his face and brushing his teeth before grabbing his sword and heading for the courtyard. Despite being on the east side, it isn’t typically a prime spot for the firebenders - too small, or too rocky, or something like that. This means that Piandao usually has the space to himself especially this early in the morning, and so he’s taken entirely aback when he reaches the entrance and hears the rhythmic _whoosh_ sounds of firebending. 

_What the fuck?_ he thinks to himself, putting a hand on his sword hilt and striding out from behind the columns, intending to give whoever’s invading what’s unofficially _his_ space at this point a piece of his mind. And then he stops, and stares, because that’s Admiral Jeong Jeong dressed in a loose red tunic, alternating between sending straight arcs of flame across the cobblestones and spinning a fire staff between his hands, fast enough that it’s just a blur of orange. He looks entirely focused on his bending, brown eyes glittering, and Piandao feels suddenly too warm for reasons unrelated to the gouts of fire tearing their way through the courtyard. 

He probably could’ve stood there staring for much longer, because the Admiral is really unfairly attractive bathed in the early light, eyes narrowed in concentration, and he works the staff like a trained swordsman instead of just a bender. But then a flash of flame jets over his head and bursts against the column behind him, close enough that he feels the heat through his shirt, and he jumps forward with a yelp.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” he snaps without thinking. The Admiral drops his hands, extinguishing the dagger and turning to face him, looking flushed with exertion - but Piandao is not going to get distracted, he’s not, not when he’s just almost been set on fire. 

“Practicing,” he drawls, raising one hand as if he’s examining his nails and lighting little flames at the tips of each finger, then flicking his wrist to extend them into ropes. “Please, I knew you were there. Stop looking like I tried to set you on fire.” 

The way the word _practicing_ rolls off his tongue, slow enough to almost trill the _r_ like Piandao’s some kind of child that needs to be talked down to, lights something in the pit of Piandao’s stomach. He might think he’s some sort of prodigy, but Piandao isn’t just going to roll over and take it. 

“Well, you’re in my space,” he bites out.

“Your space?” The Admiral’s eyes flick to the sword on Piandao’s hip, then back up to his face. “This is the first place the sun hits in the morning. It’s just logic; I should be practicing here.”

“What, you think you own the sun or something? Some of us nonbenders like watching the sunrise, too.” Piandao glares challengingly at him for a few moments before the Admiral raises a single eyebrow, face otherwise blank. He abruptly realizes who he’s been mouthing off to this whole time, and has to actively resist the impulse to swear. “Uh. Sir.” 

Instead of the reprimand he expects, though, the Admiral just gives him an appraising look.

“Piandao, right?”

“Yes, sir.” The Admiral rolls his eyes hard enough that Piandao sort of expects them to disappear into the back of his head, scrubbing a hand over his hair.

“Please don’t. I get enough of that on duty. And I _would_ argue that that is exactly what I’m saying; haven’t you heard that firebenders rise with the sun?”

 _Isn’t an Admiral always on duty?_ Piandao thinks, even as he bristles at the implications of the second comment. This man just becomes more of an enigma the more words come out of his mouth. One minute he’s tearing every convention of the power hierarchy to pieces, and the next he’s acting like just another arrogant bender with a superiority complex. 

By all rights, Piandao should just let it go and stop wasting his time on this fight - if the Admiral wants to spend his time backhandedly insulting random swordsmen who happen to wander by, at least he doesn’t need to voluntarily open himself up for it. But somehow he wants to know more, wants to figure out what makes him tick, and that is a very dangerous path to be embarking upon but Piandao had always been too curious for his own good. 

He looks at the Admiral’s face, the arrogant jut of his chin, and then lets a languid smirk curve the corners of his mouth. If anything, it’s a chance to put him in his place. Talent doesn’t give him the right to be an arrogant ass. Even if he’s pretty.

He draws his sword, falling into a duelling stance with the blade pointed down at the Admiral’s feet.

“Let’s settle this. Best two out of three gets courtyard rights for the next week.” The Admiral startles, like he hadn’t been expecting Piandao to actually _do_ anything about his comments, and Piandao scoffs to himself. It’s always like that with these officer types, thinking they can get away with anything. 

And then he flicks his fingers and closes his hand around a flame dagger, pointing it at Piandao and extending his other arm out behind him, fire blooming to life in his palm. 

“Bringing a sword to a fire fight? Bold. You’re on.” Huh. Maybe he’d spoken too soon - though there he goes again with the backhanded compliment. 

“Bringing fire to a swordfight is more like it,” he taunts. The Admiral’s eyes widen a little, and okay, maybe that came out flirty, _oops_ \- but it gives Piandao an opening to take a first swing at his exposed side and he takes it. The comment doesn’t seem to throw the Admiral for too long, though, and Piandao has to dodge out of the way of a fireball before he’s even made it halfway across the yard. By his own assessment he holds his own against the flames bursting fast and hot against the cobblestones and the columns behind them for long minutes at least, his hands starting to slip on the handle of his sword because of how sweaty the heat has made them. Finally, though, a fire whip snaps in towards the hilt of his sword and curls _around_ the blade. It’s clattering to the side and there’s fire burning inches away from his heart before Piandao completely registers what’s happening. 

“What was that about a swordfight?” 

Piandao glares, annoyed at himself for losing focus just because the Admiral had used a move he hasn’t seen before, and equally annoyed that he’s lost the first round and opened himself up for that retort. 

“Yield,” he grinds out, and the fire fizzles out, the Admiral stepping back and bowing ceremonially over his hands. Piandao bows hastily back before swiping the sweat from his forehead and darting off to retrieve his sword, head already spinning with ways to counter now that he knows that the Admiral can do that - which is, to be fair, pretty impressive. He’s never seen a bender with enough control over their fire to create solid objects besides the traditional daggers. 

He picks his sword up and taps it against the ground to shake the dust off, then returns to the other side of the courtyard and takes up a two-handed stance this time, sword angled across his body. “Again?” He receives a raise of the slitted eyebrow in return, to which his sudden need to swallow hard is not related in the least. 

“If you can keep up.” And oh, now it’s on.

“I’ll show you keeping up,” he replies, rolling his shoulders, and maybe he’s leaning into the flirting a little too hard, but it seems to have worked last time and it seems to work again now. The Admiral barely parries his first strike and dances out of the way of the second, sweeping fire across the ground with one foot but Piandao vaults out of the way and bears down on him while he’s still unbalanced from the kick. He’s noticed that he relies mostly on just sheer speed and power, which he does have an impressive amount of, but it means that he’s more apt to leave angles unexposed because he’s counting on being able to be fast enough to parry from any direction.

The Admiral lifts a hand and brings it in towards the flat of Piandao’s blade just as Piandao swings down, and before he can redirect the blow - he doesn’t _actually_ want to be the cause of any loss of limbs today - ghosts long fingers over the metal and sends flames rushing up and down its length. Piandao freezes, keeping a hold of the sword out of instinct and instinct only even as the more rational parts of his mind scream for him to drop it because _Agni, the Admiral’s just set his sword on fire._ The blaze spreads until it’s licking just above the crossguard, but it feels only like the warm glow of a campfire from thirty paces instead of an inferno raging inches from Piandao’s hands.

“Cool trick, hmm?” the Admiral says, smirking and letting his hand drop, but the flames don’t go out. 

“Yeah,” Piandao replies, and then swivels the sword so it’s parallel to his forearm and spins into a flat kick, sweeping the Admiral’s legs out from under him and sending him toppling to the cobbles before dropping to his knees to pin him down. Brown eyes go wide as Piandao leans in to level the blazing sword up against his throat, close enough that he’s forced to lift his chin to keep the fire from touching. “Also, I win.”

The Admiral stares at him across the flat of his sword, the dancing flames lighting his face in swathes of red and orange, and then visibly exhales, eyes falling shut. Piandao’s sword goes out, and when he lays an experimental hand onto the blade, it’s cool to the touch. He lifts it a little higher, until the steel kisses the Admiral’s jawline.

“Yield,” the Admiral says, going limp under him and biting at his lower lip in defeat. Piandao’s gaze catches and holds on where the skin reddens under his teeth, and he stares until he blinks his eyes open again and squints at him. “Let me up, c’mon.” 

“Oh,” Piandao says, flipping his sword away from the Admiral’s neck and hopping to his feet, offering him a hand. His skin is hot to the touch as he grabs it for Piandao to pull him to his feet, but he drops Piandao’s hand like it’s burned him as soon as he’s standing again. They stand in an awkward silence for a bit, the Admiral looking down and twirling a ribbon of fire around two of his fingers, like it’s an unconscious habit. 

“You’re actually, uh, pretty good,” he says finally, sounding hesitant and not at all like the cocky, confident man he’d been just minutes earlier during their spar. It actually sounds sincere, in fact, and Piandao finds himself replying in kind.

“Thanks. You are too, but I’m sure you’re used to hearing that. Sir.” _Agni,_ he’s forgotten the honourific again. The Admiral shakes his head, though.

“Didn’t I already say to drop the _sir?_ Actually-” He pauses, biting his lip again, and what is _with_ him and doing that, it’s going to give Piandao a heart attack, “Jeong Jeong is fine.” He says it like it’s an order, with steel in his voice even though Piandao suddenly feels like he’s been handed something precious.

“I’m just a soldier,” he says instinctively, because he’s realizing all at once that there’s a difference between the Admiral and, well, just Jeong Jeong. He isn’t entirely sure what he’s supposed to do with this revelation, especially now that _he’s_ being invited to drop the title. If the Ad - if Jeong Jeong has managed to rise this far up the ranks so young, and garner as much respect as he has, there’s no way the circle of people allowed to do that is large. They’ve really only known each other for half a day and had a single oddly tense sparring session; he isn’t sure that justifies name basis.

“Exactly,” Jeong Jeong says, then lapses into silence without elabourating further. Piandao glances up at the sky and is taken aback when he sees how high the sun has risen while they’d been sparring, and they’ve only gone twice.

“What did we say, best two out of three?” he asks.

“Oh, right. I mean…” Jeong Jeong glances away, then back up at Piandao. “Want to call it a draw?”

“S-sure,” Piandao says, taken a bit aback. With how fiercely they’d clashed at the beginning over their respective rights to the courtyard, he would’ve expected Jeong Jeong to want to fight to to the metaphorical death. He isn’t sure what to do with a draw - but he also finds that when he looks at Jeong Jeong, who’s still fidgeting with his bit of flame, forming different shapes between his hands, that he’s already seeing him as something more than just some high-and-mighty calling himself a prodigy. He might be a little abrasive, and too quick to underestimate, but he’s _sincere_ in all of it. Even the sarcasm.

“So, uh, how did you do the thing? With the fire whip? It was like you made it solid,” he ventures. Jeong Jeong grins, sharp like a knife.

“Fucked around and found out.” Piandao lets out a startled laugh, finally re-sheathing his sword and motioning towards the fire flickering in his hands.

“Seems dangerous,” he says, and Jeong Jeong glances down and then forms the shape of a longsword between his index fingers.

“It’s more fun that way, wouldn’t you think?” he says, looking over at Piandao through the bits of hair that have fallen out of his topknot, and Piandao feels the breath leave his lungs as surely as if it’d been bent out. It almost feels like there are two versions of Jeong Jeong, the one with the commander’s voice and the cocky confidence that had so grated on Piandao’s nerves earlier, and the one that asked him to drop the honourific and sometimes refuses to make eye contact and is generally just softer and quieter than first impressions might indicate. To his own consternation, and very likely his impending downfall, he finds himself interested in both, in whichever sense of the word.

Before he can formulate a response, though, the tall aide from the night before comes rushing to Jeong Jeong’s side, leaning in to mutter something into his ear and casting a suspicious look at Piandao. Jeong Jeong nods at him, shoulders straightening as he listens, and then waves him away.

“Duty calls,” he tells Piandao, then steps back and bows, shaping the flame like he would to an equal, not a subordinate. And they’re on first-name basis now, somewhat, and Piandao is feeling adrenaline-buzzed and daring, so he bows back in the same fashion. A small smile, almost shy, flits across Jeong Jeong’s face as they rise, and he nods again and pivots to start walking towards the side hallway with his aide at his back. The other man looks over his shoulder, looking mildly scandalized, but Piandao just fixes him with a serene smile until he turns back around. 

He keeps thinking about their spar even as he moves through the rest of the day - strictly technically, of course. His mind strays sometimes to Jeong Jeong looking back at him over the fire crackling down his sword, but he keeps reminding himself that he can’t let this be like flirting with the cute dockhand when they stop in a town for supplies, or even going after one of the Navy men. This is the Admiral of the Southern Fleet, and he’s done a lot of ill-advised things over the years but trying to start something there sounds like a fast recipe for the kind of trouble you don’t get out of easy. He’d said he was just a soldier, and had meant it. 

That _aside,_ though, it’d been more of a dance than a spar, equal parts fire and sword despite their verbal parrying over which term to use, and that’s something that he’s never experienced before. Even Lee, who’s one of the few people he knows who actually thinks of the sword as more of an art instead of just an instrument of war, talks about the firebenders in their ranks like they’re some sort of ultimate weapon. For Piandao, though, enough of the army’s benders think they can solve any problem with a fire fist that the mystique has been thoroughly broken in his head - they may be born with their fire, but it’s something that needs to be honed just as much as his sword does. And that’s the difference, he realizes over a bowl of rice soup before afternoon drills. That’s what had set this particular spar - and this particular firebender - apart from the rest. He clearly does have natural talent, but Piandao would bet anything that he’d spent countless hours, in his own words, fucking around and finding out exactly how far he could push the envelope.

Lee asks him, whispering hurriedly while the captain’s back is turned during drills, where his mind has been all day. Technically speaking, Piandao doesn’t _lie_ when he replies, equally as hushed - just tells part of the truth, that he’d just been caught up thinking about a new trick he’d come up with while practicing in the morning. For some reason, he doesn’t want to reveal just yet who he’d been with, not even to his friend. Thankfully, Lee doesn’t press, although that might be because they’ve learned the unpleasant way that whispers carry in the courtyards and the captain isn’t looking particularly lenient today. 

Piandao doesn’t see Jeong Jeong again for the rest of the day, although the gossip has only been enhanced by the inspections from the night before, starting from him having an eidetic memory up to him having been blessed by the spirits to be able to read minds. When he shows up at the courtyard again at the next dawn and finds Jeong Jeong waiting for him with flame blades at the ready, something possesses him to ask, in an exaggerated hush that involves leaning further into his personal space than strictly appropriate, “can you read minds? Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” Jeong Jeong looks briefly, actually nervous, eyes darting from Piandao to the other side of the yard, but just when Piandao’s starting to worry that he’s pushed too far, his expression turns conspiratorial.

“Oh, you’ve caught me,” he says, sounding a little flustered but ultimately amused. “In fact, I can tell what you’re thinking right now.” 

“What’s that, then?” Piandao asks. 

“Uh, that, I’m going to beat you?” It might just be the sunlight, but it looks like the beginnings of a blush are dusting Jeong Jeong’s cheekbones.

“Is that so? Well, if the great Admiral says so.” And yeah, that’s definitely a blush, and Piandao _has to stop,_ but he’s having far too much fun. 

“I do say so,” Jeong Jeong retorts, and it’s like the flip of a switch, new confidence coming into his voice when just a moment ago he’d been stumbling over his words. It almost makes Piandao doubt whether he’d been even reading the signals correctly, if not for the fact that he’s still blushing. 

“Let’s see about that, then.”

* * *

They both just keep showing up in the courtyard around dawn, and Piandao starts spending the walk thinking about what he’s going to lead with to fluster Jeong Jeong for as long as possible. His personal record is nearly all the way through the first round because he’d told him his hair looked nice and he’d nearly tripped over his own feet.

He’s starting to think that he should stop telling himself that he isn’t trying to start something, though. They’re at least sort of friends now, and it isn’t just about Jeong Jeong’s looks anymore - at least, it’s in addition to them. Sometimes they’ll just sit down and talk instead of fighting, and Piandao learns more than he ever thought he’d know about the other man. This includes his caffeine addiction - he prefers black teas, but won’t pass up a good oolong - that he’s weirdly soothed by the sound of water, that he can play the tsungi horn, and that he’d joined the navy as soon as he’d been old enough to enlist. He never explains the reason for that, nor does he ever talk about his family. After the first few awkward deflections Piandao learns not to ask, but he definitely suspects some connections between the two.

It’s nice, though, having Jeong Jeong open up to him. He never says it outright, but the hesitance he shows when they first start doing that hints that he’s likely never had anyone to just talk to like this. He sometimes complains about how being an admiral is basically being a glorified liaison, with how much time he just spends talking to other commanders and drafting everything from fleet courses to supply manifestos, and Piandao is more than a little surprised at how foreign it all sounds. Jeong Jeong is a year younger than him and already has all of this on his shoulders, while all Piandao has to think about on a day-to-day basis is whether or not drills are in the morning or afternoon and which part of the base he has cleaning duty for that week. He also does pitch-perfect imitations of all the other commanders that have Piandao nearly crying laughing, and he never says it out loud but sometimes he wonders why Jeong Jeong doesn’t seem to spend time with anyone besides his aide and, well, him.

“You know,” he tells him one morning as he stretches out one of his hips that’s been acting up. “When I first heard you were coming here I kept thinking about how I didn’t really think prodigies were a real thing. Like, no offense or anything, but it was always more about practice than just intrinsic talent to me.” Jeong Jeong waves off his apology.

“Don’t apologize. Actually, can you...” Piandao glances over at him where he’s sitting cross-legged on the ground, heedless of the dust getting onto his pants, and feels worry spark through him at the look on his face, open and a little bit raw. He doesn’t quite know what he’s asking for, but takes a shot in the dark anyway.

“What, say that I don’t think prodigies are real?”

“Yeah. Like, I’m good, and I’m not afraid to say it.” Piandao scuffs a bit of dirt in his general direction, and that’s something he can do now, too; mess around like Jeong Jeong is just another friend and not one of the most powerful people in the Fire Nation military. “And I can kick your ass no problem, so don’t even try me with that,” he laughs, but quickly sobers again. “I’ve just always been _the prodigy._ And when you’re _the prodigy,_ you can’t ever be anything other than that. Having you say that-”

Jeong Jeong breaks off when Piandao gets up, walking over to sit next to him and, after a moment’s hesitation, pull him into a sideways hug. He stiffens, and Piandao prepares to let go, but then he lets out a sigh against his shoulder and tucks his head under Piandao’s chin. 

“For what it’s worth, you’ve never been just the prodigy to me,” he says, half into Jeong Jeong’s hair. The next breath he feels is hot against his neck, and he fights not to shiver. “The first thing you said to me was offering Ren a recommendation at court - which she’s very grateful for, by the way - and you know what they say about first impressions.”

“Your sister seemed an exceptional woman, why would I not? This position’s got to be useful for something.” Piandao shakes his head, feeling inexpressibly fond of this man that he’s only known for weeks.

“Don’t you see? You’re more than just your talent. Not very many people would learn the name and the family of a thousand random soldiers on a base they’re staying on for three months. I don’t even know everyone here and it’s been years. You know what that tells me?”

“What?” Jeong Jeong asks, pulling back from the hug to squint at him.

“You,” Piandao says, tapping the center of his chest for emphasis, “care about people.” Jeong Jeong huffs out a wry-sounding laugh, batting Piandao’s hand away and refusing to make eye contact.

“Piandao, the one thing people know about me is that I could give less of a shit about people. Ask anybody; they’ll tell you I’m impossible to talk to.”

“We’re talking now, aren’t we?” 

“That doesn’t count.” Jeong Jeong shoves him a bit, and a cascade of sparks shiver down his fingers. He clenches his fists hurriedly shut to dissipate them, but little embers keep flickering along his arms anyway. 

“Well, it’s really not going to count if you keep trying to set me on fire!” Piandao yelps, hurrying to release him and jumping up out of the damage zone. 

“It’s not on _purpose!”_ Jeong Jeong shuts his eyes for a second and visibly takes a couple breaths, and the fire finally winks out. Piandao’s onto him already, though. Everyone knows firebending is connected to emotion, and he intends to use it to his advantage. 

“You sure about that? It’s like you care about me or something,” he says, unable to hold back his smirk as Jeong Jeong’s hands ignite again. It’s too easy, but the evidence makes him feel warm inside anyway.

“Shut _up!”_ The glare he receives might’ve cowed him weeks ago, but he’s starting to be able to tell which expression means he’s actually mad rather than just his automatic response when someone’s too nice to him. Piandao would never tell him about it, because his ego is big enough, but the time someone had brought news that someone had set part of the flagship on fire by accident, he’d felt a wild need to apologize in the face of the thundercloud that had passed over Jeong Jeong’s face even though he’d not had anything to do with it. This one is definitely the latter, though, and it makes him look a little more like an annoyed cat than anything else. It’s kind of cute, but he’s not going to tell him that either. Not yet, anyway.

* * *

Frankly, he’d been expecting their sparring sessions to make the gossip rounds far earlier than they actually do, and when a couple weeks pass and nothing happens, he pretty much forgets about it. Usually Jeong Jeong has Admiral matters to tend to or Piandao has to go and do drills after they spar, and they have no reason to cross paths in the normal paths of their days. 

One day, though, they’ve spent an hour trying to see whether Jeong Jeong could make proper fire swords so they could try a bender and nonbender swordfight. He hasn’t actually achieved it yet, and the look of consternation on his face as the sword tips continued to wobble and then turn back into whips had Piandao struggling not to laugh. They’d left the courtyard together because Jeong Jeong had insisted on carrying Piandao’s sword for a while to try and get the proper balance into his hands. He probably shouldn’t be surprised that the rumours had started flying after that, but when Lee corners him as he’s changing out of his uniform at the end of the day, he still manages to have no idea what he’s on about.

“Pian _dao,”_ Lee says, looking affronted. Piandao racks his brains to try and remember if he’s done anything to him recently; no, their last prank war had been the second week the navy had been here, and he hasn’t done anything since.

“What? Did I forget to bring you food or something?” he asks, holding his hands up in defeat.

“Well, I did tell you to bring me back a mango cake two days ago and you didn’t. That’s not the point, though.” Lee looks around the empty room, then lowers his voice. “Why didn’t you tell me you and the Admiral were buddies?”

“Oh,” Piandao says. “Sorry. I didn’t even know people knew about that - I mean, it isn’t really anything, we just spar in the mornings.”

“Damn right you’re sorry, I had to hear about this from _Jin,_ and I did not want to give him the satisfaction of making me look like a fool today. Especially about something involving my own best friend.” He pauses, still looking offended, then barrels on before Piandao can apologize again - Jin’s the rich kid in Lee’s unit that they’ve collectively decided to be mortal enemies with because he won’t shut up about the cushy job he gets once he’s done with his service, and being subjected to him is something he wouldn’t wish upon an enemy. “And what do you mean _not really anything,_ that’s Admiral Jeong Jeong we’re talking about, you don’t ‘just’ anything with him. He’s literally impossible to talk to.”

“I’m _sorry,”_ Piandao repeats once Lee’s blown himself out. “And fuck Jin, obviously. It just...slipped my mind?” He doesn’t mention that he’d thought about telling him and then decided against it; now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t even know why he’d done that. He tells Lee everything.

“Ugh, Piandao, it’s been weeks. Have you been doing this all that time?”

“Yeah, kinda,” he admits, and accepts Lee’s disappointed eyes without complaint. He kind of deserves them.

“Ugh. Whatever. What d’ya think, then? You know, up close and personal.” 

“Don’t say it like that, it sounds weird.”

“Hey, you’re the one that’s making it weird.” Piandao rolls his eyes, picking up his pauldrons and starting to run a cloth over them.

“Am not. Anyway, he’s just, kind of, normal? He was in my courtyard on the second day they were here and he nearly set me on fire and then you know, it just went from there.” Lee regards him incredulously.

“No, I _don’t_ know? How do you get from nearly being set on fire to being regularly seen together doing, well, it depends on who you hear tell it?” Piandao’s stomach drops to his toes.

“Doing _what,_ Lee?” Lee makes a little moue with his mouth, and Piandao groans aloud. “Never mind, I don’t want to hear it. Of course people made it weird. I swear, we’re just friends.”

“I believe you,” Lee says, indirectly confirming all of Piandao’s worst-case suspicions. Great. “Look, don’t worry. These things always blow over. D’you want me to start some shit so people talk about that instead?” Piandao laughs hollowly and pats Lee on the shoulder.

“It’s fine. You’ve never needed an excuse to start shit, just don’t get caught this time - but like you said, it’ll blow over.” Agni, he hopes Jeong Jeong hasn’t heard about this. Tomorrow will be extremely awkward if he has.

They sit quietly for a while, Piandao returning to polishing his uniform.

“I mean, I’ll tell you,” he says eventually, glancing over at Lee, who sits up in attention. “There isn’t really that much to say, though. I’ll admit that the prodigy thing seems to be true, and you know I didn’t really believe in that. Did you know he could make solid fire besides daggers? Fire-whipped the sword right out of my hand the first time we sparred.” 

“Woah,” Lee says, looking starry-eyed. 

“Yeah. That was something else.” He still feels like he’s revealing something private, even though the whole base has likely heard some version of it by now, but it’s good to talk about it himself. Lee makes appreciative noises in all the right places, and laughs at Piandao making a fool of himself, and it’s all really alright in the end. It’s been a long time since they’d just gossiped like this.

Lying in bed later, though, he realizes what the sinking feeling had been, and why he hadn’t talked about any of this before. It’s _jealousy,_ at someone other than him, even Lee, seeing some of the parts of Jeong Jeong that he’d subconsciously established as just for him. He wants to keep all of that for himself, and that’s stupid because he knows Jeong Jeong and he knows that he doesn’t belong to anyone, least of all Piandao, and would probably set anyone who tried on fire. 

They’re not together. The rumours don’t have any basis. He keeps thinking that, over and over in the dark. They’re just friends. But he can’t shake the voice in his head that says that he’s been flirting with him all this time and Jeong Jeong has definitely noticed by now, if the way he blushes and stumbles half the time is to go by, and has never told him to stop. That makes him think that maybe he... _wants_ him to keep doing it? 

_Bad idea._ **_Bad_ ** _idea. Really bad idea,_ he berates himself immediately, rolling over to cover his head with his pillow like he can smother the thought right out of his brain. Hasn’t he already told himself he isn’t going to go there? 

_But..._ Jeong Jeong had told him about struggling with being a prodigy, and had let him hug him, and they spend actual time together now. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to go after the Admiral, but he isn’t just the Admiral anymore. 

In any case, Jeong Jeong isn’t actually his commanding officer, not legally, so they wouldn’t be violating any regulations. _If_ Piandao does this, and _if_ he hasn’t catastrophically misread the situation, of course. 

He’s just going to try it. Just a bit. He’ll stop if he needs to. In the end, no matter how much he wants, he thinks Jeong Jeong just needs a friend. If he can be that for him, at least for however long they’re in the same place, that’s going to have to be enough.

He’s still thinking about it as he steps onto the cobblestones in the morning and is met with Jeong Jeong squinting appraisingly at him.

“You look freaked out. Is it the men talking?” Piandao blinks at him, then walks a couple paces forward and plops down on the ground. Jeong Jeong sits down next to him without breaking their locked eyes, fiddling with a little bit of flame as is his habit.

“You know about that?” Jeong Jeong scoffs.

“I know everything.” 

“Shut up,” Piandao says, uncrossing one leg to kick him in the ankle. Jeong Jeong flicks a puff of fire at his nose, but he does this often enough that Piandao doesn’t even flinch, and it fizzles out before he even feels the heat on his skin. “I haven’t even heard anything weird, but you know how it gets.” He debates with himself for a second, then moves his knee so they’re barely touching where they’re closest together.

“Honestly, I’ve heard enough shit about me that it doesn’t bother me anymore.” Jeong Jeong shakes his head ruefully, shifting so their knees are pressed more firmly together. “That’s what I get for making admiral at 25. If anyone says anything weird to you, though, I’ll be happy to challenge them to an Agni Kai.”

“Jeong Jeong,” Piandao huffs out, chuckling. “Overkill, much?” But there’s no hint of amusement in the steady gaze he gets back, and he realizes with a jolt that he’s entirely serious. “Hasn’t anyone told you to pick your battles?”

“Oh, many times.” He leans back on his hands, embers drifting up from his knuckles. “I just picked all of them. All the ones that were worth it, anyway.” He’s saying you’d be worth it, hisses the voice in Piandao’s head. He’s acutely aware of the warmth of Jeong Jeong’s body next to his, and he takes another chance and leans back to mirror his posture, deliberately placing his hand so their pinky fingers are only a hair’s breadth away from touching.

“Well, it’ll blow over,” he says, echoing Lee’s words from the night before. Jeong Jeong hums, lifting his hand to tuck a piece of hair back into his topknot. When he puts it back down, it lands squarely across Piandao’s, nearly burning-hot against his skin. He freezes, darting a glance over at Piandao, who attempts to look as nonchalant as possible, then blinks rapidly and jumps to his feet. The glow of flame is still barely visible through his clenched fists, and Piandao looks away so he doesn’t catch sight of the smug smile tugging at the edge of his mouth.

“It will,” Jeong Jeong says apropos of nothing, a bit too loudly like it’s a declaration instead of a statement. It’s obviously a deflection, but Piandao thinks he’s teased him enough for one day. 

“You know something I don’t?” he can’t resist jibing as he also pushes to his feet, rubbing his palms together and reaching for his sword. Jeong Jeong ignites his blades too, but Piandao can see that the fire hasn’t actually gone out since their hands touched. 

“You’ll see.” He sounds less flustered with the fire burning away in front of him, but he’s still flushed and the swords are crackling more than usual. “I tried the swords again and I kinda think I got somewhere.” Wondering what he could possibly be planning, Piandao obligingly draws his sword and raises his eyebrows.

“Bring it on.”

The swords _are_ better, even with the messy edges that fail to calm through the whole of their spar. Piandao has to stifle a smug look every time he sees them flare when he brushes a little too close on his way to pick up his sword or start a new bout; so far, it looks a lot like he’s reading the situation very correctly indeed. 

Jeong Jeong still hasn’t told him what exactly he’s going to see by the time they part ways, Piandao tossing a wink in his direction that makes him stiffen and glare back at him over his aide’s shoulder even as he continues smoothly with his sentence. He’s taken entirely by surprise, then - although anyone would be - when he wakes up in the middle of the night to a hand shaking his shoulder. 

He bolts upright out of instinct and a million midnight readiness drills, and finds his face inches away from Jeong Jeong’s. In the flickering light that turns out to be a ball of fire in his left hand, Piandao can just make out his dark hair down around his face and a black cloak thrown over his shoulders, hood pulled halfway up and somehow failing to hide any of his identifying features in the least. He’s never seen him with his hair out of the topknot, so he can’t be blamed for staring for a second as his brain short-circuits. 

“Come on,” Jeong Jeong hisses, like this is a perfectly normal thing to be doing at whatever ridiculous hour it must be. 

“What - Jeong Jeong?” Piandao mumbles, still off-balance both from being yanked abruptly out of sleep and from the sight of the messy bangs hanging over the sides of Jeong Jeong’s face. 

“Who else? Now get up, we’re gonna do something.” He yanks at his arm, his grin a slash of white in the darkness. 

“What...are we doing?” Jeong Jeong rolls his eyes like Piandao’s said something particularly stupid, which is somewhat unfair. 

“You’re gonna find _out.”_ He turns his back abruptly as Piandao finally gathers himself enough to toss the covers back and grope around for his shirt, trying to make as little noise as possible among his sleeping fellows. 

“How’d you even know where to find me?” he asks as he finally yanks shoes on and Jeong Jeong leads the way out of the barracks, flame held up in his hand like a lantern. 

“Have we not already established that I know everything?” The night isn’t cold, they never are, but Piandao still shivers at the wolfish grin that spreads across his face. “I never reveal my sources.”

“Okay, that definitely means you abused your Admiral powers,” Piandao grumbles, but he isn’t really annoyed, not when Jeong Jeong is warm at his side against the gentle night breeze. “For shame.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet.” He doesn’t get to ponder the implications of that for long, though, because Jeong Jeong grabs his arm to drag him around a corner and out of sight of the night patrolman making his way down the corridor. “Shh,” he orders, shoving Piandao behind him and peeking around the corner, pulling his hood further down over his head and extinguishing the flame. 

“Don’t shush me, I’m older than you,” Piandao retorts, but squishes closer between him and the wall - not that it would actually help if they were discovered, but this way, his hair brushes against Piandao’s chin when his hood falls back again. 

“Don’t make me pull rank.” He glances over his shoulder, dark eyes hooded in the low light. “Let’s go, he’s gone.” 

“Wait,” Piandao says, stopping him with a hand on his bicep as he makes to step out from behind the wall. “Your hood.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t move to fix it, though, leaving Piandao to reach back and ever-so-gently pull it up and over his head. His hair is soft against his fingertips, and in a moment of daring, he brushes a lock away from his face and tucks it under the fabric.

“You’re good,” he says quietly. Jeong Jeong looks caught, eyes wide as he raises a hand to touch the side of the cloak where Piandao’s fingers had just rested. 

“Thanks,” he replies, equally as soft. They’re close enough that Piandao could count his eyelashes if he tried, and he sees it when Jeong Jeong’s eyes dart down to his mouth. He’s absolutely convinced he’s going to kiss him, if only for a second, and his hand is already shifting when Jeong Jeong inhales and steps away, cloak whirling close around his shoulders and the fire re-igniting itself in his hand.

Piandao exhales, bringing one hand to his mouth like he can still feel the weight of his eyes on it, and then follows along as Jeong Jeong, head down, ducks out of the side corridor and continues down the hall. 

By the time they’ve made their way up several flights of stairs and across at least three-quarters of the compound, Piandao is starting to freak out. They haven’t exchanged words since the cloak thing and there’s no way Jeong Jeong didn’t know what was about to happen. 

“We’re here,” Jeong Jeong says finally, turning to face him and gesturing out at the balcony before them. 

“The citadel balcony?” he asks, but most of his attention is on feeling relieved because Jeong Jeong is grinning playfully at him again, no sign of the stricken expression from earlier left on his face.

“Not _just_ the citadel balcony.” And then he darts out onto the balcony and leaps up, kicking off the railing and vanishing from view. Piandao hurries out after him and hears the clatter of his feet against the roof tiles, looking up to see him laughing and offering him a hand.

“You are something _else,”_ he says, backing up so he can do the same move. Jeong Jeong grabs his forearm as his feet hit the edge of the roof and pulls him all the way up. As he lets go the whole expanse of the mountains comes into view on one side, and the compound sprawls out on the other, the stars reflected back in little pinpricks from the ocean offshore.

“So?” Jeong Jeong prompts, gesturing out at the view like he’s presenting some sort of show.

“Holy shit,” is the only thing that Piandao can manage, because this is just _unfair._ There’s this view and then there’s Jeong Jeong standing there with his cloak half falling off one shoulder, looking bright-eyed and gleeful silhouetted against the dark sky, sparks tumbling from his hands in excitement. “It’s gorgeous,” he says, and isn’t only talking about the landscape. 

“Isn’t it?” Piandao’s head snaps up, but Jeong Jeong has already turned to look out to sea. He looks nearly regal with the breeze catching the edge of his cloak and ruffling at his hair, and then he spins back around with a goofy grin on his face and Piandao’s heart skips a beat. “I come up here sometimes ‘cause no one’s going to look for the Admiral on the roofs,” he says, deepening his voice over the title and sticking his nose in the air. 

“Can’t you just tell them to leave you alone? Make it an order,” Piandao says. Jeong Jeong sighs, and it’s like the air has gone out of him all at once. He sits down on the edge of the roof and dangles his feet into the empty air, heedless of the mud it’s probably getting on his clothes. Piandao hesitates before stepping forward and sitting cross-legged next to him.

“I can’t,” Jeong Jeong says after a while, turning his head just enough for Piandao to catch his eyes, the brown deepening nearly to black in the darkness. “There’s always one more thing, y’know? Admiral’s work is never done. And people have always expected more from me, I think from the moment I started bending, because I’m, well, me. Prodigy.” 

That single word, ‘prodigy,’ is imbued with so much bitter venom that Piandao nearly recoils. Strangely enough, though, the rest of his sentence settles at Piandao’s breastbone and sinks down until he feels it like the aftershock of a gut punch. He sighs and turns to face him more fully, reaching out to put a hand on his knee.

“I understand that,” he says. Then he stops. 

_It’s a give-and-take,_ he remembers his sister telling him, the first time he’d cried over a boy when he’d been thirteen. _It’s about trust, yeah? They trust you, you trust them._ He can still hear her voice like it was yesterday. He really does need to make the time to write to her at court. 

Jeong Jeong is looking at him still, expression carefully neutral, and he decides to take the leap. “Well - again, it’s not like what you must be dealing with, but my mother and sister are at court and my father’s in the government and I’ve just always kind of been...the normal one? People want me to be like them, but I’m just...not.”

“What would you do?” Jeong Jeong asks quietly; wistfully maybe. His fingers come to rest over Piandao’s, dangerously close to grasping his hand. “If you could do anything.” 

He knows the answer to this one, but still pauses before answering, letting the question hang in the air as a wave breaks on the distant shore.

“Smithery. Forging swords, probably. It’s below my station, but-” Jeong Jeong hushes him with a finger in the face, close enough to his nose that it makes him blink involuntarily.

“If I can be friends with ‘just a soldier,’” he says, echoing Piandao’s words from way back when they’d first met, “you can do that. Station’s just something to keep people in line.” He pauses, darting a nervous glance in Piandao’s direction. “We are, right?”

“Friends?” Piandao says, eyes widening. Spirits, has this man never had a friend in his life? As soon as he has the thought, he has the even more sobering one that it might be true. “Of course we’re friends. You think I spend hours every day with just anyone?” 

“Well, I’m sorry to take up your precious time, swordsmaster,” Jeong Jeong says, bowing from the waist as well as he can while sitting, but his shoulders have gone slack with relief. 

“You should be, I am very important,” Piandao jokes, nudging his shoulder into Jeong Jeong’s once he’s upright again, and then just stays there instead of moving away. Jeong Jeong doesn’t move to press closer, but doesn’t pull away either, so he counts that as a win.

“You’re normal,” he says after a stretch of silence, apropos of nothing. 

“Should I feel complimented?” Piandao asks, bemused. He gets a nudge in return where they’re still leaning together.

“No, I mean, if you want? I’m saying that you’re not some lackey, or my subordinate, or something. You don’t think I’m different, or want something from me.” He stumbles over the last few words, and Piandao physically feels the air heat even as the weight of his shoulder against him disappears. “...It’s nice.”

“You’re just a person,” Piandao says, turning to meet his eyes head-on and feeling a fierce sort of protectiveness welling up inside him. “Fuck anyone who says you’re nothing more than your skills, or your title. They clearly don’t know who you are.”

“Thanks,” Jeong Jeong says simply, squeezing his eyes shut before opening them again and smiling wanly. 

_No one’s told you that in a long time, have they?_ Piandao thinks, watching as he turns back towards the sea, having moved subtly closer to him in the process. He takes the hint and presses their upper arms together again, shivering at the sudden warmth on that side. _No one’s told you that just existing is okay._

Not for the first time, he wonders who’d made the decision to put a 25-year-old in command of a whole fleet - and Agni, if he’s already full admiral then he must’ve been a captain even younger. Everyone his age is probably his subordinate, and if the navy works anything like the army then breaking protocol gets you thrown to the antelope-wolves sooner or later.

“Believe it or not, I didn’t bring you up here to be maudlin.” Jeong Jeong suddenly claps his hands together and pushes to his feet, snapping fire into place atop his fingers and giving Piandao a look that practically dares him to comment on the faint redness around his eyes. “C’mon.” Piandao accepts the offered hand, callouses rough on his skin, and clambers to his feet, and Jeong Jeong uses their joined hands to start dragging him across the slight slope of the roof.

“Slow down,” he yelps as his foot catches on a roof tile and he nearly trips. “If I fall then you go down with me.” Jeong Jeong looks over his shoulder to level him with a distinctly unimpressed look.

“I won’t let you _fall,”_ he says, and Piandao’s breath stutters in his chest at the complete conviction in his voice. “Anyway, I thought you’d have no problem with this, being a master swordsman and everything.”

“You think swordfights happen on rooftops?” Piandao asks, putting on his best offended air. “Some crazy firebender dragged me up here with no warning.”

“You mean you’ve never run around on the roofs for no reason? Live a little, sleep is for the weak.” They skid to a halt at the top of the rise, and Jeong Jeong gestures proudly at a small stack of long, thin objects lashed to the ornamental moldings. He lets go of Piandao’s wrist at last, dropping into a crouch to untie the ropes. Piandao rubs absentmindedly at the spot where his fingers had been and takes the opportunity to look his fill; his hair falls forward until it just brushes the curve of his jaw as he struggles with the knots. It makes him look younger, softer almost despite the grin on his face that would be best described as _feral,_ and Piandao isn’t sure if he wants to wrap him up and never let go or kiss him until he can’t see straight. 

Both, maybe. Both would be good.

Jeong Jeong swears under his breath, and a spark jumps from his finger to the single remaining knot and it sizzles away. He tosses aside the wrappings, shaking his hair out of his face, and brandishes-

“Fireworks?” Piandao says, eyes crossing as he tries to look at the multicoloured objects suddenly inches away from his nose. “Wait, I recognize those. Did you steal them?”

“I prefer the term _liberated_ \- but if you must, yes, I stole them.” He laughs, bright and open, and pushes the fireworks into Piandao’s hands, tugging the top one off the pile and gesturing like it’s a short sword. “Look, if the General didn’t want them stolen then he shouldn’t have left them out in plain sight at the back of the armoury.”

Piandao knows for a fact that these specific fireworks had not been ‘in plain sight;’ to the contrary, they’d been stored on the highest loft shelf in the armoury, because he’d been the one to put them there. However, he’d nearly fallen off the ladder while doing that because apparently they hadn’t had the budget to replace the flutterbat-eaten ones, and had been stuck up in the loft for a full hour and a half before someone came in and found him there, so he doesn’t feel particular love for that task either. He moves to hold the fireworks properly, and grins back. 

“Well, if they’re _liberated,_ the General probably won’t even notice.” Jeong Jeong, who’s started to look apprehensive at his lack of reaction, only gives him a blank stare, and he hurries to clarify. “You know, how he’s failing to liberate the southern islands - oh, never mind.” Jeong Jeong blinks, and then snorts out a laugh as Piandao sputters himself into silence.

“You should probably leave the insults to me,” he says, still chuckling, and yelps as Piandao kicks him gently. “Or, fine, whatever, make a fool of yourself if you want.”

“Friends aren’t supposed to let friends make fools of themselves,” he says in his best royal court accent, pointing the stick ends of the fireworks in Jeong Jeong’s direction.

“No, you laugh when that happens, obviously.” Piandao snorts. 

“You seem to have that one down already. You know they were planning to set these off on the solstice anyway, right?” 

“Spoilsport. There’s still some left, anyway, taking all of them would’ve been too suspicious.” He stakes the end of his firework under a loose tile and rests his hand on Piandao’s elbow to pull him back a couple paces. He keeps his hold on the fireworks in his arms by sheer dumb luck.

“Why does it seem like you’ve done this before?” he mutters as Jeong Jeong starts taking the remaining fireworks from him and staking them in a neat line down the roof ridge a couple feet apart. 

“Now where would you possibly draw that conclusion from?” He dashes back over the roof towards Piandao, who reaches out to steady him, hands hovering inches away from his waist, as he skids to a stop even though he’s perfectly sure-footed on the tiles. 

“I wonder.” 

“Ready?” He raises one hand, second and third fingers pressed together. “We might have to run depending on how fast people notice what’s happening.” 

“Ready,” Piandao affirms, mouth dry at the feral grin now directed specifically towards him. He thinks Jeong Jeong could’ve asked anything of him at that moment and he would’ve said yes.

Jeong Jeong sweeps his hand in a neat arc, and individual gouts of flame leap from his fingertips and land on the bare ends of each fuse. The other hand curls around Piandao’s wrist, callouses scraping his skin, and together they scramble down the curve of the roof and hop down to the balcony. 

The first rocket whines into the air, trailing smoke, and Piandao props one elbow on the railing and cranes his neck upwards to see it burst in a scatter of blue. The explosion has brought the night guards running, and they duck down below the railing to hide their silhouettes from below. The next few explode in quick succession, red then orange then yellow in a sort of starburst pattern, and the air around them goes thick with smoke. 

As the rest of the colours pop in a sweeping arc across the sky and Piandao attempts to wave the smoke out of their faces, he realizes that each of those flames had been timed so that the correct colours would go off together. Dear Agni, he’s good.

A gust of wind sends the lanterns strung along the rafters swinging, and the light illuminates Jeong Jeong’s face for the barest second, casting crazy shadows over its dips and valleys. The little sparkles still drifting down from the fireworks are reflected back in his eyes, and he’s still holding Piandao’s wrist, as if he’s forgotten he’s doing it. His touch burns like a brand against his skin, and Piandao is suddenly very aware of how close they are, squashed against each other in the corner of the balcony. Jeong Jeong seems entirely oblivious of the fact that he’s looking more at him than at the fireworks still lighting the sky, and he thinks that maybe that’s a good thing. He wants to look as long as he can, to immortalize this moment in his memory, of Jeong Jeong looking loose and carefree and like the child he’d evidently never gotten to be, complete with the smoke from the fireworks finally drifting down to cast a haze through the air.

Jeong Jeong finally moves, glancing down through the spaces between the vertical supports of the railing and then tugging on Piandao’s wrist to point. He looks down and sees people starting to appear in the courtyard, in various states of uniform, looking upwards at the last few trick fireworks.

“Huh, that was fast. Run, if you take the back way you’ll get down to the yard faster.” Piandao glances between him and the soldiers below.

“What about you?” Jeong Jeong laughs and brushes his hair back, starting to bind it up into his typical topknot.

“I’ve got a plan.” Piandao hesitates, and then runs, crouching down until he’s off the balcony and sure he can’t been seen. Above, the last sparkles from the last firework are still drifting downwards. He looks back to see Jeong Jeong crouched next to a potted plant and fiddling with the clasp of his cloak before he dashes away, scrambling down the back staircase and melting seamlessly into the forming crowd. The General comes storming onto the scene a few minutes later, face like a thundercloud and his shoulder pauldrons just a little bit askew. 

“What is the meaning of this?” he thunders, glaring up at the sky and then back at the soldiers, who all try valiantly to avoid eye contact. “This is theft of military property and a misuse of resources, and the culprit will be punished accordingly.”

Silence. Someone to his left taps him on the shoulder, and he looks over to see Lee, sleep-rumpled and with his uniform buttoned wrong. Lee motions at the sky, then points at Piandao, who shakes his head, hopefully convincingly.

“Well?” the General demands. Piandao really hopes that Jeong Jeong knows what he’s doing, because he wouldn’t put it past their commander to keep them here all night until someone comes clean. The crowd shifts restlessly, not daring to murmur but still audibly tense.

And then, just when he’s really starting to worry, he comes striding in from the back entrance dressed in full uniform with his hair neatly tied back and his shoulders set. His bearing is every inch the Admiral, and if Piandao hadn’t been there he’d say it was impossible that he’d just been sneaking around in a cloak.

“General, is there a problem here?” he asks, voice carrying clearly over the width of the courtyard, consonants clipped short and harsh. The General sputters, drawing himself up to his full height, but as Jeong Jeong stalks up to stand in front of him, Piandao thinks that the General’s attempts to loom are very poor indeed.

“Someone is appropriating military property and encouraging frivolity in the middle of a war,” he states, eyes roving over the courtyard. Lee and Piandao exchange incredulous _are you hearing what I’m hearing_ glances; the rivalry between the army and navy for the biggest solstice festival stretches back almost to the beginning of the war itself. 

“There is no active campaign in this sector,” Jeong Jeong says, clasping his hands neatly behind his back and staring the General down, completely in control despite standing head and shoulders below his height. “And one might argue that frivolity, as you put it, is simply a well-needed boost to morale.” 

_Holy shit._ The other man blinks, pressing his mouth into a displeased line, but Jeong Jeong has just verbally disemboweled him on a public stage and the shocked silence means that absolutely everyone knows it. If Piandao weren’t frozen in parade rest he would be jumping around and yelling and maybe throwing caution to the wind and kissing him in full view of everyone because _good spirits,_ he’s never seen a takedown that smooth in his life. 

“And the fireworks?” the General attempts, but the bluster has gone out of his voice. 

“An accident with the fuses, most likely. My flagship does happen to have a stock of last season’s if replacements are necessary.” This is full of shit for two reasons - first, that the two of them had set the fireworks off from the highest point in the base, also known as _pretty damn far from the storage sheds,_ and second, that the kind of precision fusework Jeong Jeong had done is the furthest thing from an accident and if anyone had been paying a lick of attention they’d know that. The General isn’t exactly in a position to argue, though, and he seems to know it.

“That will not be necessary,” he says stiffly, and it’s a good thing that none of the sailors are present, because that could be taken as a grave insult to their collaboration. Jeong Jeong evidently decides to spare him the further humiliation, however, just nodding sharply. 

“Very well. Goodnight, General.” The General looks like he might burst into flames as Jeong Jeong brushes a nonexistent piece of dust off his shoulder and offers him a bow that fairly reeks of smugness. Piandao just stares, mouth gone dry at the nonchalance of it all.

“Admiral.” He bows back, and someone less charitable would describe his retreat as fleeing. Jeong Jeong turns on his heel, regarding the crowd with the same carefully neutral expression from earlier, and meets Piandao’s eyes. Piandao grins at him, and is rewarded with a lopsided quirk of the eyebrow before he strides out of the courtyard in the opposite direction that the General had gone.

“You know something,” Lee accuses, falling in next to him and fixing him with a squint as the crowd begins to disperse, chatter spiralling up into the night as soon as they’ve judged the General is out of earshot.

“Who, me? I don’t know anything,” Piandao replies, schooling his face into a neutral expression and fighting the urge to look away.

“Then what was that look about?”

“Nothing, just, y’know, that was a hell of a takedown, did you see the General’s face?” He’s counting on making fun of the General to distract his friend, and it seems to work. Lee immediately breaks into a delighted laugh, starting to babble about the exact shade of shock his face had gone. Piandao nods and makes affirmative noises at the right times, but most of his mind is focused on thinking about the entire night and how much like, well, a date it had felt. He wouldn’t put it past Jeong Jeong to actually classify _committing a minor crime_ as a valid date option, and it’s more surprising that he’s entirely unsurprised by that thought, and that he’d had more fun than he has in ages. 

The barracks doesn’t quiet down for what feels like hours, and Piandao eventually sticks his head under his pillow to block out the continuing buzz of whispers. It isn’t because he’s trying to sleep, though; he just can’t stop _thinking._

It isn’t about thinking he’s attractive anymore, and if he’s entirely honest with himself it hasn’t been in a long time. It isn’t even about the fact that they’d nearly kissed at least once - although he’s thinking about that, too - but that he’d talked about his family, and his secret dream of running off and forging swords for the rest of his life instead of anything he’s expected to do, without even flinching. Lee’s the only other person who knows about that, and there’s a morbid sort of humour in the fact that he’ll trust his fellow soldiers with his life but not with his secrets. With Jeong Jeong it’s both, already, and maybe his heart too, and it should scare him but it doesn’t.

“You’re distracted,” Jeong Jeong says as he disarms him for the third time in as many bouts after he wanders into the courtyard in the morning, dark circles under his eyes and head full of the deja-vu of deciding to try something between them for the second time in as many days. “Is everything alright?”

“I’m fine, just tired,” Piandao lies, turning his back on him, ostensibly to retrieve his sword but really to hide his chronically horrid poker face. “You know the whole base is losing its collective mind over what you did last night?” He looks up just in time to catch the wicked smirk that crosses Jeong Jeong’s face, and he barely catches the sword as it tumbles from his hand.

“Told you I had a plan; it isn’t my fault the General isn’t smart enough not to walk right into it.” Piandao laughs and hopes his blush isn’t too visible as he turns back around, sword clenched too tightly in his fist.

“I particularly liked the comment about the replacements,” he says inanely, berating himself in his head the moment the words leave his mouth. Of all the things to say.

“What’s the army-navy rivalry for other than to put unruly brass in their place?” His eyes narrow dangerously until they’re just slits of brown, and he spins a dagger in one hand and a newly improved sword in the other. “Applies to distracted soldiers, too.” Piandao swallows and readjusts his grip on the handle of his sword, and they circle each other apprehensively. Jeong Jeong’s tiring too, though, and even though his control over the blades themselves stays solid, he’s moving a little slower, his attacks a little more sluggish. Piandao shakes off as much of his distraction as he can and backs him in a flurry of strokes towards the side of the courtyard where he’s spotted a rogue cobblestone sticking up from the ground. Jeong Jeong swears as he parries with his dagger and snaps his other wrist to extend his sword into a fire whip, but he’s used this trick one too many times and Piandao isn’t about to fall for it again. 

He yanks his sword to one side as the whip curls around the empty air where it used to be, then brings it back up to catch the follow-through and send Jeong Jeong stumbling in the direction of the broken stone. His heel hits the cobble and he wobbles, eyes shooting wide, and Piandao jumps forward to catch him, holding him by the side of his tunic for a second before grinning and letting him fall back against a nearby column. His flames wink out as his back impacts the stone, and Piandao pins one of his wrists down and brings his sword to rest against his chin.

“Gotcha,” he says lowly. Jeong Jeong doesn’t struggle, just looks up at him with half-lidded eyes, panting out harsh breaths, and if Piandao could bend the entire complex would be up in flames. His heart is pounding so hard that he can feel it in his fingertips, and he reverses his sword and sheathes it before he can drop it again and end up finishing this in a trip to the infirmary. He keeps his hand over Jeong Jeong’s wrist, fingers brushing against the rough stonework behind, and moves his other hand to slip two fingers under his chin and tip his head up. Jeong Jeong goes willingly, and they’re so close that he can feel his breaths coming erratically against his skin and he gets the swooping feeling of missing a step on the staircase.

Now or never.

“Can I kiss you?” he says on an exhale, so quickly the words run together. Jeong Jeong’s mouth falls a little bit open, eyes flicking to Piandao’s lips, and Piandao holds his breath.

“I put on a whole fireworks show for you, idiot,” he whispers, quiet enough that it might as well be under his breath. Piandao chokes on a laugh.

“Of course you’d be sassy _now.”_ He leans in, giving Jeong Jeong time to move away, but he just stays there, like he’s frozen, and Piandao suddenly realizes that he can feel him shaking. “Wait, are you - sure?”

 _“Agni,”_ Jeong Jeong gasps out, and nearly jerks forwards, and their noses bump painfully. “Ow. Fuck.” 

“Hey,” Piandao says as Jeong Jeong squeezes his eyes shut, cheeks flaming, and shifts his hand from his chin to cup his jaw, pressing gently to tip his head to one side. He presses closer, and their mouths finally meet, light as a whisper. 

Jeong Jeong goes slack under him, nearly melting back into the column, and Piandao releases his wrist to slide his arm around his back and take his weight. He keeps it as chaste as he can, just a brush of lips, but he can’t resist a nip at his bottom lip as he pulls away. Jeong Jeong makes a tiny, desperate noise, sparks spilling from his fingers to sizzle among the cobblestones as he looks at Piandao like he’s drowning.

“Hey, you okay?” Piandao asks, stroking his thumb along the line of Jeong Jeong’s jaw, and he makes another one of those sounds, head falling forward to rest against Piandao’s shoulder.

“I’m okay,” he says into the fabric of his shirt, but he’s trembling. Piandao runs both hands down the arch of his back and presses his lips together, feeling worry spike through him. 

“You sure?” He tries to think back, remembers the hesitation, bumping noses and the way Jeong Jeong had shrunk back into himself in...embarrassment?

_Oh, Agni._

“Was that…” He trails off, trying to figure out how to phrase it. Jeong Jeong lets out a defeated noise and raises his head to look him in the eye.

“Yeah, my first,” he says, voice dripping with forced nonchalance, but his hands give him away, braced flat against the stone column to prevent another outbreak of flames. “It doesn’t matter, okay? Don’t make it a thing.”

“I’m not going to make it a thing,” Piandao says, the worry melting away into a quiet sort of fondness, rippling through him like a stone dropped into a pond. “I’m glad-”

“If you’re going to say you’re honoured or something, I’m going to set you on fire,” Jeong Jeong grumbles, but it’s an empty threat and they both know it. Just to call his bluff, Piandao releases him and reaches out to pry his fingers off the column, turning his hands palm-up and fitting his own against them. 

“Would you, now?” he asks, unable to resist a smug smile, and Jeong Jeong huffs and squeezes his hands, then raises one finger and sends a jet of flame to burst against the ground, just barely licking up against their feet. 

“If you keep being so smug about it, maybe I really will.” Piandao brings one of their clasped hands up and kisses his knuckles, keeping eye contact the whole time. He smells like smoke from bending, and a bit like bergamot. “I’m not some courtesan,” he protests, but doesn’t break the eye contact.

“Oh, I know, but you deserve good things, and what kind of a first kiss would I be if I didn’t give them to you?” Jeong Jeong lets go of his hands to shove him, and more fire drips from his fists now that they’re apart.

“I regret this already; since when were you this much of a smug ass?” He goes willingly when Piandao reaches out to reel him back in, though, so he decides he doesn’t really mean it. 

“So you don’t want me to kiss you again?” Piandao teases.

“No, I think you’d better try it again,” he says, grasping Piandao’s fingers and bringing them back to his cheek, skin still flame-hot against his but eyes determined. “I’ve been told I’m a fast learner.” And really, what is Piandao supposed to do besides comply?

The second kiss isn’t actually very good, and the less said about the third the better - it had involved some burnt fabric, and come very close to a nosebleed - but by the fourth, Jeong Jeong has finally remembered to tip his head the right direction even though he does keep starting miniature fires every time their mouths even barely brush. 

He definitely sets a row of the weeds growing between the cobblestones ablaze the first time Piandao licks tentatively into his mouth, tasting ash and oolong tea and peppermint. An actual whine leaves his mouth when Piandao pulls away, and he spins them around to press Piandao back into the column and return the favour, with a little more enthusiasm than finesse but he doesn’t particularly care, not when Jeong Jeong is kissing him like he’s air and he’s suffocating.

Piandao’s mouth is bruised pink by the time they part for the last time, and it’s a small comfort that Jeong Jeong hardly looks better, both of them dishevelled and breathless as they lean together. Jeong Jeong tucks himself into Piandao’s side when he lifts his arm to wrap it around him, and Piandao drops a kiss into his hair.

“You sure about this?” Jeong Jeong asks after a while, tipping his head back so he can prop his chin on Piandao’s chest. “Me?” He fidgets with the edge of his tunic, but doesn’t look away. “I’m - you know what people have said about me. I’ve told you some of it yourself. And now you know I...haven’t been kissed and - what are we doing?” He flushes and tries to look away, but Piandao catches his chin before he can hide his face back in his shirt.

“Well, now you have,” he says, sweeping some loose hair off his forehead. “Jeong Jeong, it’s not about any of that. It doesn’t matter to me, none of it does. It’s about _you,_ and I like you. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jeong Jeong says, and squeezes his eyes shut and exhales. “Can I order you to pretend this conversation didn’t happen?”

“You don’t have to. Who would I tell, anyway? I barely tell people about myself, much less you.” He relaxes a little, and accepts a peck on the nose when Piandao leans down to give him one. “A fair warning, though, Lee - that’s my best friend, he’ll probably figure it out eventually, if I keep coming back looking like this.”

“If you trust him then I’m fine with it. Anyway, I’ve never seen a secret stay secret for long on a base like this, so I suppose I’ll live.” _I hope it doesn’t,_ Piandao thinks to himself. _I want to be the only person who sees you like this._

He doesn’t say it, of course, instead settling for a noncommittal shrug as he props his chin atop Jeong Jeong’s head, but the thought keeps cropping up even after they’ve finally parted ways for the day - he gets to have this now, for however long it may be. 

They start spending evenings together, too; after night has fallen and most of the base is bunking down for bed, they meet in the courtyard that been the beginning of all of this. No matter which of them gets there first, Jeong Jeong always comes over and plants himself directly in Piandao’s path. After the first few times, he’s figured out that that’s him asking for a kiss even though he still can’t seem to get the words out, and he always obliges, drawing him up onto his toes and teasing him about teaching him something new today. He still blushes like an inferno every time Piandao does anything like brush his hand or kiss him on the forehead, but unfortunately, he’s discovered that if he raises his eyebrows in just the right way he has a pout that can make Piandao do almost anything. He’s been liberally abusing this power ever since, for everything from more kisses to trying some weird pastry he’s brought with him from the commanders’ dinner. 

The pastry is okay, but it tastes better kissed off of Jeong Jeong’s lips. He thinks it’s because he’s the only one who gets to do that, but he certainly isn’t complaining.

* * *

It’s the middle of the day on one of Piandao’s rare off weekends when a messenger comes running with a missive with the official Admiral’s seal stamped on the wax fastening, directing him to report to the docks post haste. He’s pretty sure that this is Jeong Jeong trying to ask him on a proper date for once, so he takes the time to put on his nicer tunic and the boots that aren’t covered in muck from cleaning out the ostrich-horse stalls. He still walks a little faster as he makes his way down, though, just in case there actually is trouble.

He finds Jeong Jeong standing where the wooden docks meet the shore, wearing loose clothes and a different cloak, this one trimmed in gold and cut to fall half off one shoulder, and decides that he had the right assumption the first time. 

“You wanted to see me, Admiral?” he says as formally as he can with an amused smile flirting with the corner of his mouth, coming to a stop in front of him and holding up the parchment. 

“Oh, stop it, we’re both off duty,” Jeong Jeong says, looking like he wants to fidget and holding it back through the sheer power of parade rest. 

“You’re the one who asked me out with an official document, what was I supposed to think? Maybe you needed menial labour done. Unless you’re misusing paperwork with other soldiers too? I’m hurt.” 

“N-no! It’s just you. Anyway, you figured out it was a date, so...” He inhales and looks away, cheeks heating, and Piandao grins and steps closer until he’s just into his space.

“I’m just teasing, of course I knew it was a date. I’m keeping this, by the way.” He rolls the scroll back up and uses the end to tap Jeong Jeong on the nose, tucking it inside his tunic as he blinks in surprise. 

“I’m...glad,” Jeong Jeong coughs, blushing fiercely and ducking his head to try and hide it. Piandao grins fondly and takes another step forwards to press a kiss to his temple, where it looks like he might just be whispering something in his ear to a distant observer.

“You’re cute when you’re flustered,” he says when he pulls away. “Come on, then, where are we going?” Jeong Jeong sputters and goes even redder, just confirming Piandao’s statement.

“River, I thought we could just, sit or something?” he mumbles, hands coming out from behind his back and ruffling his cloak as he twists them together. “I don’t know, I’ve never…”

“No, it’s brilliant,” Piandao says, covering his hands with his own and tugging him in to kiss his forehead. “I wonder what people would say if they knew you were this sweet, you know, under all the sass.”

“I know where you live,” Jeong Jeong mutters, but he’s smiling when Piandao releases him.

“Yeah, so do I. Just accept it, it’s what I deserve for putting up with you the rest of the time.”

“You’re the worst, really. Why’d I think to do something nice?”

“I wonder.”

They take the delivery road around the back of the complex, sticking close to the high wall to minimize their chances of being seen. Whatever this thing growing between them is, it feels precious and private for many reasons, including and perhaps tantamount on how tentatively shy Jeong Jeong is every time he tries to initiate something. 

Speaking of, as they slip out the back door, Jeong Jeong nodding at the bored-looking guard and receiving a respectful _Admiral_ in return, he feels the barest ghost of a brush against his pinky finger. He glances over and sees Jeong Jeong staring resolutely ahead, hand stiff by his side, and shrugs and keeps walking.

A few minutes later, as they leave the complex behind and wander onto a dirt path towards the center of the island, he feels another brush. This one is a bit harder, and this time he’s blushing when he looks over. Piandao grins and fixes his eyes forward too - he knows what’s going on already, but he wants to see what’ll happen the third time.

Another brush, and he decides to put him out of his misery, grabbing his hand before he can move it away again. Jeong Jeong looks up at him, a shy little smile on his face, and curls their fingers together, apparently willing to make the move now that he’s shown he’s okay with it. They don’t say anything about it, but what is there to say, really? Jeong Jeong’s palm is warm against his, a reassuring weight of _I’m here,_ and he can’t keep himself from smiling softly as he squeezes once and feels a squeeze in return.

There’s a warm breeze blowing as they make their way down the valley, ruffling Piandao’s undone hair and sending wisps curling out of Jeong Jeong’s updo to fall around his face. In a flight of fancy he pauses in the middle of the path, a scattering of long grasses brushing against his ankles over his low-topped boots, and uses his free hand to brush the hair out of his face and tuck it behind his ear. Jeong Jeong catches his wrist as he lowers his hand and uses it to pull him in for a kiss, quick and warm, and they’re both smiling as they come apart. Piandao traces a finger along the scar over his eye, leaning down to press a kiss to the spot where it splits his eyebrow, and Jeong Jeong flushes all the way down past the collar of his tunic.

“How’d you get it?” Piandao asks as they start walking again, Jeong Jeong touching the hair behind his ear with a reverent expression on his face. “If you want to say, of course.” 

“The scar? Oh, it’s stupid, I got a little too close to some dual swordsman, and get this, tripped on a rock.” He shakes his head with a self-deprecating laugh. “Imagine the rumours. Youngest Admiral in a hundred years dies because of a rock.” Piandao squeezes his hand again.

“You have to be more careful, yeah? First this, then you remember our first kiss was after you tripped on a cobblestone.”

“Those are two completely different events, unless you’re comparing kissing me to me nearly getting stabbed?” 

“Oh, shut up, I’m trying to worry about you here. I’d much rather not have kissed you because of that specific reason if it meant you didn’t get stabbed.”

“I have to disagree with that one, I’d been dropping hints for a month and a half and if you hadn’t done that then I would’ve taken it into my own hands and someone probably would’ve died. I didn’t even get stabbed, not really, and it looks badass at least.” 

“‘Not even stabbed’ is a low bar and I, personally, would like my boyfriend to set himself a higher one.” Jeong Jeong rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling softly like he always does when Piandao calls him that.

“Oh, whatever. I guess I can make some exceptions, if you’re asking.” He shakes a finger in Piandao’s face when he turns to comment because really, that had been wonderfully sweet. “Don’t think this means I’m picking less battles, though. I have a reputation to maintain.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” 

They hear the river before they see it, and Jeong Jeong throws Piandao a wink and kicks his shoes off, holding them in one hand and using their joined hands to pull him off the path and up a grassy knoll.

“C’mon,” he grins as the river comes into view at the bottom of the next valley, and drops Piandao’s hand to dash off down the hill. 

“Hey,” Piandao yells and chases after him, shoes slipping in the dewy grass but he’s unwilling to stop and take them off. Jeong Jeong throws his head back and laughs as he skids to a stop by the riverbank, dropping his shoes on the dirt and turning to beckon Piandao towards him. Piandao gets an idea and changes course, barely slowing down as he crashes into him and sends them both sprawling to the ground, cushioning the back of Jeong Jeong’s head with his hands.

“Ow,” Jeong Jeong complains, rubbing his head anyway and pouting, but Piandao refuses to let it get him again.

“Don’t be a child,” he replies, leaning up on his elbows and bracketing Jeong Jeong’s head on both sides so he can grin down at him. “You wanna run away from me, that’s what you get.” Jeong Jeong grins wickedly, and then the world suddenly reverses and Piandao’s on his back and looking up at him in confusion.

“Gotcha,” Jeong Jeong says, pecking Piandao on the mouth and then sitting up and picking some grass from next to his knee, sprinkling it over Piandao’s face before he can bat him away. Piandao glares and pushes himself upright, shaking the grass off and flicking what he can catch in Jeong Jeong’s direction.

“I’m going to get grass stains,” he complains halfheartedly as he stretches his legs out in front of him, but he isn’t really mad, not when Jeong Jeong’s laid back down so his head is in his lap and tangled their fingers together. He runs his free hand through his hair, stopping when he reaches his topknot and tugging gently at the hairpiece holding it up.

“Can I?” he asks. Jeong Jeong’s eyes have fluttered shut, the stress lines at their corners and over his forehead smoothing out, and he just hums in acquiescence. Piandao smiles to himself and pulls out the pin securing the hairpiece, lifting it over the little bun and balancing it on Jeong Jeong’s stomach so he can brush his hand through his freed hair. 

“Grey hair at twenty-five?” he says, stroking soft fingers through the streaks of light hair at his temples. 

“Try dealing with the number of incompetents I see every day and tell me you’d still have hair like yours,” Jeong Jeong grumbles, but his head falls back to press further into Piandao’s hand.

“I like it. Makes you look distinguished.” Embers jump from Jeong Jeong’s hands and scatter into the grass around them, and he yelps and hurriedly waves a hand to extinguish the little blazes he’s started. Piandao shakes his head, adopting a disappointed expression. “You know, it’s not nice to try to set your boyfriend on fire. He might get the wrong idea.”

“Shut _up,_ I don’t - control it,” but he sputters out at the end of the sentence, clearly having realized his mistake. Piandao slides his hand further into his hair, fluffing it up in the back, and grins down at him.

“No, I’m pretty sure you do,” he says as Jeong Jeong tries to cover his face with his hands. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you bursting into flames every time I got within about a foot of you.”

“Ugh, I was hoping you hadn’t.” He seems to blank out for a moment, and then yanks his hands away and glares incredulously at Piandao. “Were you doing that on _purpose?”_ Piandao blinks, and then bursts out laughing. “I cannot _believe -_ spirits, you’re so stupid, why do I even like you?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Piandao splutters out, still chuckling as Jeong Jeong shakes his head in hopes of dislodging his hand from his hair. “I just couldn’t help it. You _know_ that everyone knows firebending’s connected to emotions, it isn’t my fault you felt the need to set yourself on fire.”

“I’m not talking to you anymore.” 

“I can deal with that.” It’s an awkward position to kiss at, Jeong Jeong twisted to prop himself up on his elbow and Piandao leaning over to get the angle right, but he doesn’t really mind, not when Jeong Jeong makes a soft noise into his mouth and presses closer as if he could climb inside him and live there forever. 

He’s blushing again when they separate, if he’d ever stopped, and Piandao can’t resist dropping a peck on his nose as he pulls away. When he lays back down in Piandao’s lap his mouth is pink from kissing, and Piandao reaches out to trace a finger over the outline of his top lip just to see him gasp. 

“You’re a tease,” he mumbles as Piandao returns his hand to his hair, nudging into the touch like a cat. 

“And you’re pretty,” Piandao returns, and he’s always thought so but here in the bright sunlight, with the river rushing a few feet away and the breeze lifting strands of grey-brown hair to fall over his face, he looks like he’s been drenched in gold.

He’ll paint him like this, he promises himself, golden and laughing and free of the cares that fall too heavy on his shoulders whenever they’re on base. It can be their next date, maybe, unless he happens to have another idea. He just wants this memory to be on canvas, now and forever, and it’s too early for love but he thinks he could get there one day.

He tugs a wildflower off its stem and tucks it behind Jeong Jeong’s ear, just to see him blink his eyes open and bat at it until it falls into his hand. 

“Cute,” he says, reaching up and sticking it into the undone buttonhole at the top of Piandao’s tunic and then closing his eyes again. 

“You mind if I braid your hair?” Piandao asks, securing the flower better so it won’t fall out when he gets up. Jeong Jeong shakes his head, lifting it up a little so Piandao can sweep the loose ends out to spread across his thigh.

“You seem to have a weird fascination with it anyway, and, you know, it feels nice.” Piandao grins and leans over to pick a couple more flowers, setting them down on his leg and separating the hair on the side of his head into three bundles. 

Jeong Jeong dozes off as Piandao carefully braids the flowers into his hair, blue and orange and yellow in a row on one side, purple and pink and red on the other. He’ll paint those in, too, even though his braids are messy and lopsided because it’s been years since he used to do them for Ren when they were younger.

He doesn’t prod him awake once he’s finished the braids, instead leaning back on his hands and just looking at him, face slack in sleep and chest rising and falling steadily. His eyelashes are almost criminally long, fanning across the dark circles under his eyes, and by the size of those this nap is well overdue.

“You need to sleep more,” he whispers, stroking light fingers over the ridges of Jeong Jeong’s cheekbones and down the sides of his face. His eyes flutter open at the contact, and he blinks sleepily up at him. “Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I shouldn’t have fallen asleep, sorry, I’m definitely ruining this date aren’t I?” Piandao shakes his head, tracing the same path in reverse and smiling as Jeong Jeong squirms under his touch.

“No, you deserve to sleep. You’re not ruining a thing.” He gestures as if to say _look around you._ “Pretty landscape _and_ a pretty boy to look at? I couldn’t ask for more.”

“Smooth.” They’re quiet except for the trickling of the river, and Jeong Jeong’s eyes slide shut on their own again. “You sure you don’t mind if I keep napping on you? Kinda want to go back to sleep.” he mumbles. 

“Not at all. You look like you need it.” 

“‘Kay.” 

When Jeong Jeong wakes up again he looks like a month’s worth of lost sleep has lifted off of him, and he drops a chaste kiss on Piandao’s mouth, easy as anything, before wandering down to the riverbank to look at his new braids in the water’s reflection.

“I like them,” he says when he returns, plopping down and leaning his head against Piandao’s shoulder. 

“They’re a mess,” Piandao replies, tugging at said braids to try and straighten out the sides.

“So are all of us. Come on, race you back to the road!” He jumps up, all lassitude gone, and gets halfway up the hill before he remembers his shoes and sprints back down to grab them, cloak flying out behind him.

“That would be deep with another sentence,” Piandao hollers back, following at a more leisurely pace and finding Jeong Jeong waiting for him by the side of the path, just as he’d expected. He slides their hands together, and even though he’s only done it once it feels more natural than breathing.

They hold hands all the way back to base, Piandao slowly picking the flowers out of Jeong Jeong’s hair because unfortunately he can’t exactly walk around with them braided in. He leaves the braids, though, at Jeong Jeong’s own insistence, and tucks the flowers in with the scroll from earlier; he might press them to keep, he thinks. 

As they reach the bend in the path that leads back the way they’d left through, Jeong Jeong stops, tugging on Piandao’s hand to swing him around to face him. 

“Thanks for today,” he says, eyes soft. “And for - being you, y’know? With me. Not being weird about any of this.”

“‘Course,” Piandao says, drawing him close. “Actually, thank _you_ for thinking of it at all. I’m historically awful at planning dates, as my last three exes will gladly tell you.” _Fuck,_ it’s definitely bad form to bring up your past exes around your current partner. Jeong Jeong just laughs, though.

“Well, living on a military complex will do that for you. I’ll just be the one with the brains in this relationship.”

“Oh, let’s not go that far.” He gets a roll of the eyes and Jeong Jeong swaying up to kiss him to soften the blow, though, so he supposes he can accept it. 

When they round the corner into sight of the guard at the gate they’re a respectable foot apart, and they stay that way all the way back to the barracks even though Piandao aches to reach for his hand again. They haven’t talked about being really public with this yet, besides Piandao saying that Lee will probably work it out soon - he hasn’t yet, but it’s any day now. Besides that, he isn’t going to press past whatever Jeong Jeong is comfortable with. It’s his head, after all, what with his reputation and all the gossip that already flies, and even though Piandao would gladly bring a sword to an Agni Kai with whoever dares to cast any sorts of aspersions, it isn’t his place to make the decision. 

For now, he’s content with occasional dates like this, and stolen kisses in the courtyard, and the knowledge that Jeong Jeong might care about him in the same way that Piandao does. That’s enough for him.

They stop outside the door to the barracks, and he looks both ways and, seeing no one in the corridor, steps in to press Jeong Jeong against the wall and kiss him deeply. 

“See you tomorrow,” he says, pressing their foreheads together. Jeong Jeong smiles and strokes a finger across Piandao’s cheek, stealing one more kiss before Piandao lets him go.

“Tomorrow.” He waves, tossing little balls of flame up from his fingertips to splatter against the stone floor, and heads off down the hall. Piandao watches until he’s disappeared around the corner, smiling softly, and touches his fingers to his mouth before he inhales and turns to push through the door to the barracks.

Lee materializes out of the shadows before he’s even gotten one foot over the threshold, staring Piandao down with a slightly murderous expression on his face.

“Okay, let me get this straight,” he says. “You’ve been dating the Admiral _how long?”_ Piandao sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, looking at Lee plaintively.

“Is there any way you can just forget that you saw that?” 

“Nope, absolutely not. Now spill, how long have you been keeping this from me?” Piandao sighs again, making his way past his friend to sit down on the edge of his bedroll. 

“Well, it all started with the courtyard.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos would make me so incredibly happy and pls pls come yell at me about pianjeong on [tumblr](https://acezukos.tumblr.com). pianjeong nation rise <3
> 
> \------
> 
> here are some references because i am at heart an academic; none of this art was related to this fic but they were all brilliant inspirations  
> this is jj EXACTLY as i imagine him and now you get to see him too [here](https://sword-over-water.tumblr.com/post/627240462529462272/i-just-saw-ur-jeong-jeong-x-piandao-art-again-and), by sword-over-water  
> this is the pose from the first swordfight [here](https://hylianshroom.tumblr.com/post/626526082999418880/gotcha-just-guys-being-dudes-whats-better-than), by hylianshroom  
> and this is how i imagine the "sword on fire" in that one scene [here](https://acezukos.tumblr.com/post/626114275471147008/glitterystarseed)


End file.
